


with our faith still in each other

by signalbeam



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/F, Imprisonment, Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 17:32:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2118636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signalbeam/pseuds/signalbeam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ymir comes back. Her welcome is less than she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with our faith still in each other

When Ymir returned to the Wall, she went straight back to who she was before, just another rat living between buildings, crawling into the empty rooms of an inn for a quick snooze, and wearing long-sleeved shirts and aprons so she could slip food up her sleeve and into her pockets at the markets. She had lost something by prancing around as a soldier for so long. She made a passable kid when she first came through the wall, canny then, quick-fingered with desperation and burning with mean indifference to the people she borrowed from. Don't mistake it, she wasn’t sorry for any of them. It was just that back then she had never known anyone who had given serious thought to the plight of stall owners and merchants without thinking about pushing the whole thing over and running away with the strongbox. There had only been Christa, who had done it all. Gasped, reprimanded Ymir with her fists so tight that her fingertips curled into her palms turned purple, ignored Ymir until Ymir stuck an apple into her mouth. These tiny things, altogether, were worth half a nothing to her; but now, squeezing through the throngs, she was aware that she existed as a person who could be judged. Here she was back where she started and poorer for it. 

She couldn't pull off the poor orphan trick anymore, but she could do others. Young woman in a bar who bought you one drink and walked away with your purse. Charming vagrant by day and sneaky lockpicker by night. One night she stole a horse out of a stable and rode straight out of town. She sold it in the next city, then took another horse and rode farther out, towards her old stomping grounds.

There was a sign she passed by occasionally as she ran her little horse-stealing operation. She never looked at it long enough to get more than half a sentence or a phrase into her head at a time. But one night, pressed against a wall and waiting for the police to walk past the opposite street so she could pick her way into the stable, a poster kept scraping against her cheek, like a window blowing open, or a scab flaking away. She pinned it to the wall with her forearm. 

With the poster so close, she couldn't help to look at it, really look. The ink caught the starlight, one edge at a time. Gradually, her eyes adjusted. _By order of the King! If you are a person gifted with the ability to transform into a remarkable creature suited for some talent such as large-scale log cabin building or turning into a jewel_ —her eye skipped down to the middle. 

_By order of King Historia,_ it read. Right there. 

*** 

"I want to turn myself in," she said the next morning at the station with cheer. "Yup. That's me."

"The horse thief?" the soldier at the front desk said, narrowing her eyes. 

Ymir held up the poster. 

"Great," the soldier said. "Just fill out this application and we'll put you with the others." 

Name: Ymir  
Age: Old  
Occupation: Scoundrel 

They did a bad sketch of her face, had a bureaucrat fill out the bottom half of the form, then put her in jail. 

Congratulations to the government for major improvements with internal communication! Barely an hour later a soldier came down and said, "The king's guard is on their way," with a tone of disbelief that conveyed, like a brown lunch bag with a piece of rotting fruit at the bottom, a sneer. 

The king's guard was a gaggle of kids and Sasha with a bow and a quiver of arrows across her back. "That's her," Sasha said, with unfatigued enthusiasm. "Still alive?" 

"Who's not?" she said, and presented her manacled wrists to Sasha. She shook her arms up and down like a fish wiggling its entire body.

Sasha cleared her throat, loudly. "Anyway, by order of the king! I'm bringing you in." 

Sasha, easy-going, tied up Ymir's hands with rope, stuck her in the back of a cart, and said nothing as she and the throng of small kids she had brought with her steered the cart through the city streets. No loaded questions or even small talk. Not a cold shoulder out of loyalty to the king, but a total lack of curiosity in what Ymir had been up to or where she had been. 

The streets narrowed. Sasha's eyes swept one route, then another. They were making their way steadily to the edge of town. Down a blind alley, then another, there was a small crew with a fresh set of horses. A tall young man was wrapped up in a cloak and put in the back of the cart. 

"That's hurtful," Ymir said. Sasha cut the ropes from her wrists and gave Ymir a horse. She took it reluctantly. It'd be easier to stomach if this was her tricking her way into freedom by exploiting Sasha's guileless heart. Instead it was her with her hands wrapped in the leather reins, her heels pressed to the horse's side, her insteps snug against the stirrup. It was already understood that she would not run away. 

"Whew," Sasha said, and tossed Ymir some bread. "Here. This should keep you going until we catch up with the rest."

*** 

From there they made a mad dash out into the forest, out to the countryside. Still within the walls, but rushing towards the mountains. After almost a day and a half, under cover of darkness, they found the tailend of a long van. They were met by guards from the Survey Corps and were rushed up, higher and higher, until they reached the weird commander, the one with the glasses, and captain cranky. Those two were riding alongside two carts full of wheat and potatoes. 

"Of course, the first thing we must do is verify her claims," the commander said, taking Ymir by the chin and salivating mysteriously. "Could you transform right now? Come on, go take a chomp, I've been so bored on this trip I can hardly stand it."

"Not here," said the captain, and raised himself out of the saddle so he could adjust the straps of the 3DMG around his thighs. "You half-ass half-wit." 

"We designed those posters to attract Eren's attention in case he gets kidnapped and loses his memory again," the commander said. "But we don't mind if the net drags up some interesting surprises, too!" The commander mimed Eren waking up and staring at his thumb in horror: _Who am I? Where am I from? Who are these cannibals?_

Tiny captain stuck her on the back of a cart among crates of potatoes and bags of onions, and put ropes around her wrists and ankles again. There was a growled statement about running away and cowardice that she didn't listen to and further discarded from her mind. "Sit there and don't try anything funny," he said, then rode off. The horses clopped through the night, then the early morning. Small forest gave way to a larger forest, tall, dead trunks shooting straight up to the sky, all their green finery left to grow on their very fringes. At some point she fell asleep. 

When she woke, she had a splinter in her cheek. The horses had stopped moving, all gone still for some reason or another. On a fine, gray horse was a tiny woman, her golden hair pulled back and her hands tight around the reins. 

“If you think this means I’ve forgiven you,” Historia said, in the start-stop chant of one talking to oneself, “I haven’t. If you think I'll forgive you straight away, you're wrong. If you...”

“A-Are you rehearsing?” Ymir demanded, stammering like a child before some horrible hole. “Have you spent this whole time I’ve been out practicing your big speech?”

The horse’s reins went tight; the horse whined and fought Historia’s grip, then settled down again. Her face passed out, then back into, a lamp's burning glare: rising up, tense, then thrown into the murky shadow of a tree, then tossed back out of it winsomely dead-eyed, sucked of something vital. Ymir fought to turn herself over, get onto her knees. She was eager to be yelled at, to get over the hump that would be Historia's anger so she could fall back into her good graces—truth be told, she hadn’t thought much about this moment, dreamed fastidiously only of the after. Twirling Christa around in a circle and watching her transform, like a rusted iron nail in vinegar, to the person beneath. Kissing her with whole purity, betrayal nothing but some sand that could be spat out.

Historia swayed in the saddle.

"Well?" Ymir said, her cheeks going red from the effort of keeping her words firm, without a wobble. "Are you happy or not?" 

She had expected a happier king, you see. She had expected a crown. Instead she got Historia’s cheeks splotchy from fury, Historia in a plain dress—not even white, but the most boring blue she could have imagined.

“If you think,” Historia started. Then her jaws snapped shut. Her eyes were wide and furious, but restrained. Her tongue flicked between her lips, a small pink point. “If you think I’ll…”

She snapped her head around. Her hair flew around her, slashing the air around her. Her horse reared up, then jerked away from the cart.

*** 

The castle was wedged in a sharp slice formed by the intersection of a mountain and a giant slab of rock. Around it grew a crooked, gangly forest, looking as though it had been drawn in by an amateur artist, black, scribbly lines, one after another, like iron bars. Ymir was tied to a post down in the basement—"Hey!"—with a bowl of water at her feet while the Survey Corps set up camp upstairs. 

No one had occupied this castle for years. She sat among rubble and dust so thick it had become its own layer of sediment, barely troubled by Ymir’s heel or knees. Bare slots of light came from high on, illuminating old furniture and fallen stone. She could see nothing of the outside but the shadow of leaves decaying in pyramid heaps.

While the hours went by, Hanji came by for blood samples. Other members of her old division stopped by, if only to peek and wave, or to glare. It was only Eren who dared to rush up to her feet. “Ymir!” he said, shoving past everyone who tried to restrain him. “Tell me, where are Reiner and Bertholdt? What happened out there? Did you see my father? If he’s a Titan now, he might have his glasses!”

Hanji came back for more blood samples. Mikasa brought an axe—she was in the middle of chopping firewood—and some bread. Armin watched from afar, calculating. What a creep. She could see him twenty years from now, paunchy and fervid with a fleshy nose. 

Finally, Historia came for her. Above, the din had changed from the grunts and chit-chat of work to the rowdier shouts of relaxing soldiers. Historia had changed into the old uniform, as though to match the ambience. The pips had changed—had she been promoted while Ymir had been gone, a commission to go with the crown?

She came with a lantern, as though Ymir might flinch away from it like a ghost from a mirror. It just made her hungrier to look. She stared openly, only faltering when Historia’s face hardened against her.

“Your neck,” Ymir said. “It—it looks really nice! Moisturizer? Oh, I know. You showered, right?”

“Ymir,” she said.

She tugged at the rope on her wrists, tried to yank herself free from the post. “Let me go, won’t you?”

“How do I know that you aren’t an enemy of mankind?” Historia said. “Or that you aren’t an agent from the outside, like Annie was?”

She stopped trying to pull loose. “Yeah, you’re right. I might be. In that case you better let me go so I can kill you, your highness.”

Historia set the lantern on the floor. Lit from below, she looked just as small as before. Smaller than Christa, less developed and more raw. If you hit her, you’d dent her. Christa had been more resilient—or it was just that just by looking at Christa you knew you were looking at the veneer? Break one layer and there’d be something beneath.

“You were the one who told me to live.”

“Not like this!” Ymir said. “You’re the king, are you? But you’re the same. Doing whatever someone else tells you, living with your head bowed like a knocked over tree.”

“I am different,” she said. “Because I know how selfish you really are—I truly know! If I had known you would have left me… if I had known you were the type of person…”

“I did it for you!”

“Then you’re even more selfish than I imagined!” She walked right up to Ymir and pushed her. Not hard, but Ymir slammed backwards anyway into the post. Historia retreated to a safe distance but beneath, glowed with fury. Ymir ought to be madder; but the pain of why things weren’t happening the way she had dreamed them, the pain of not being welcomed, had vanished at Historia's first touch. 

“You knew I was selfish from the beginning,” Ymir said. “Don’t cry over it now.”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know it until I went through it.” 

Historia was worrying at a ring. Not one around her finger, where it might get caught and require the hand to be severed so that the gold could be saved, but around her neck. It was a fine ring, gold for sure, with a massive ruby swelling up through the band, surrounded by small sapphires. Ymir knew all this without looking too hard at it. She was, after all, a rogue who had once made her living cashing in on the church's jewelry. Line five great estates up in a row and she’d steal from the bishop and the cardinal every time. Free of their duties of overwrought symbolism, the jewels could be pure beauty. The magic of royalty was that it was the royalty itself that was ostentatious, while the objects themselves could be plain or even half-assed. 

Historia’s fingers were radiant in the lamplight. “I’m so angry with you,” she said. “I don’t know how I can live with myself and hate you this much.”

“You hate me?” Ymir said.

“Yes, I do.” She picked up the lamp and stepped closer to Ymir, so the candle burned hot against Ymir’s cheek. “I’ve never been loved by anyone. When you made me Historia, you took away the only part of her anyone had ever cared about. You should be grateful to have this much from me.”

It had been said to hurt her. Ymir knew it, but those words filled her with ecstasy, made her happy beyond happiness. Historia stepped back, troubled by the grin on Ymir’s face. She turned on her heel and left.

“Hey!” Ymir shouted, laughing giddily between breaths. “Better make sure no one cuts me free, you hear? Otherwise I might come after you! I might come to eat you in your sleep!”

***

In the morning they gave her a small room, separate from the others. She was to be chained by the ankle to the back of that room if she wanted her privacy; otherwise she’d be escorted by a soldier from place-to-place. At first she thought this was Historia being petty, but then captain toddler glowered and said, plainly, that this was the right thing to do, and no one trusted Ymir. What had happened on the other side? Where had she gone? What did she see? Why did she come back? Who, it was implied, had she become?

And even if she answered those questions, there were others lined up and waiting: how long had she been inside the walls? Why did she turn herself in? Who had she talked to since she had returned? What had they offered her in exchange for her cooperation?

“What?” Ymir said, overwhelmed by the volume of accusations and how they cruelly exposed her own lack of ambition. “No. What? Me?”

Sometimes Hanji would take Ymir for trips into the mountain. On Hanji’s command she’d turn into a Titan and do some handiwork. Shitty cabins, giant fences, things like that. Hanji would draw more blood and poke and prod, say things like, “Now do this!” while doing jumping jacks and spinning around in circles. Hanji, unlike Levi, was willing to impart information onto Ymir—indeed, seemed to relish it.

“The long and the short of it,” Hanji said, “is that there are some people who object to our seditious attempts at installing Historia in as king! Hahaha.”

Actually that was all they had said to Ymir on that subject before going back to grilling her about Titan-shifting mechanics. 

Installing. That was a good word for it. Slotting Historia into the throne the way you might flip a horse over and hammer in the shoe. Or welding two pieces of metal to one another—determined to fuse them into each other so one part could never function without the other.

She hadn’t guessed that Historia would be so utterly without spine or conviction. It wasn’t a disappointment. It lit her up, agitated her and gave her something to think about through those long weeks while Historia didn’t see her. Presumably she was busy doing kingly duties: practicing anti-kidnapping drills, brushing up on hand-to-hand combat, picking up the language of legislature and law. Learning how to build a king’s face and do the king’s job, running away into this new self with the white of her tail flagging high as she bound into that dark forest.

She rested on the floor of her cell, tapping her foot against the stone wall, thinking hot thoughts that kept her going through the long hours when no one needed her to be anywhere and everyone else was busy. Left to herself, the savage throb of her memories constantly grabbed at her, pinching at her torso and limbs and face. Then she thought of Historia, the total defeat in her eyes…

It wasn’t about saving her. If Ymir lacked ambitions in villainy, she had, at least, failed at heroism, too. Oh, in a way it was just about having something to distract her from how small the cell was, how if she spread her arms out and tilted a little she could flatten one palm, then the other against the wall, how the thrill of being hated had passed to anxiety, how she had memorized the scratches on each stone. Thinking of Historia Reiss had always been synonymous with forgetting. Or rather, fantasizing. She had wanted to meet that heiress, to tell her to stick her thumb in the eye of everyone who was telling her to die. It was what she wanted for herself, too. 

Gradually Ymir came to understand that she had chained herself to Historia out of necessity. She had a grifter’s sense of opportunism and escape. There was nothing more important than your body and your freedom, nothing but those two things. The body was an instrument and a tool, to be commanded and pushed. But freedom? 

She had broken over the wall not just once, but twice now. The first time she came through, she had no idea how to live. She had gravitated to the churches and fattened her soul on sermons and lust for silver and iconography. There, beneath flying buttresses and high vaults, she learned what it meant to be one kind of human. How to seem straightforward and play tricks, to spot a lie and find the people who were like her, however many of them they might be. How to equivocate and lie and believe yourself. 

You could go on a journey without a destination, but you’d still need a compass or a direction. A something to get somewhere. If the priests that night had talked of some other woebegone lady of mysterious upbringing, Ymir might have latched onto her instead. If that girl had gone and become a nun, Ymir would have figured out how to get in there. As a guard, at the very least. Lowest of the low, scummiest of scum, she had pursued Christa Lenz only because she knew it would take her somewhere. Her modus operandi had always been to grab onto survival, wherever it’d take her. But that wouldn’t have gotten her past sleeping on a hard floor without any friends, without anything but her wild hope that those who had wronged her were howling jealously in their graves. She wanted them to hate her for being so well-off, to have lived, even if only among the rats, when she should have died. 

She used to dream of eating Christa. _Reclaim your own name and live under it!_ Ymir the Dream Titan had cried and ate the weeping princess whole. It was only later, with Christa's knee and shin shoved rudely against her bare stomach, with Christa's cheek curved against her shoulder like a sleepy planet descending into the hillside, that she understood how analogous motion was to desire. To eat, to devour, to take something in whole. The body demanded more than simple flesh for sustenance; and Ymir, greedy, rude thief, had acquiesced gladly to its demands. How was she supposed to know this was where she’d end up at the end of it? Chained by the ankle in a shadowed cell, thinking fitfully of the dreams she had long ago.

***

Eventually she realized she could leave. Her foot was bound, but they had left her hands free. She could bite in and rip out the stones, or she could wait until Hanji took her into the woods. She plotted an escape with a cool expertise. The captain must have sensed it because he asked her one day, "If you had to, how would you get out of here?" Like a grade A idiot, she went and boasted of all the ways she could have already left, expecting to be rewarded or let out for staying so long when she had formulated so many plans. The next morning, someone was setting bars in her thin slip of a window. 

"Hey!" she exclaimed when Levi passed by her cell. "What gives?" 

"Home improvements. Shut up. The dust hurts my head. Good for nothing subcontractors." 

When the subcontractors ran into a problem with the wall, Levi came to move Ymir to the throne room. The ceiling soared, the windows were narrow and let in light in shafts cut by the shadows of trees. Historia sat on a stool by a small table by a window. Strands of hair spun away from her head and glowed white in the sun. 

“Leave her here,” Historia said, rising. 

“You sure?” Levi said. 

“Yes!” She didn’t look at Levi. She stared at the floor, her stance wide but head low. “Leave us alone for a while. I’ll call for you.”

Levi grunted but left. Historia went back to the table. Her fingers rested against the page of a book. Her eyes kept flicking to it, as though consulting the pages. 

Ymir spread her arms apart. Since she had come with Levi, she had no chains, even had a set of fresh clothes on. No time for a shower the night before, but she didn’t look too scruffy, or so she thought. “Aren’t you going to give me a hug?” 

“Ymir,” she said, and this time looked up at her with palpable courage. “Why don’t we run away? They’ve been keeping you locked up, haven’t they? And as for me, I’m a prisoner here, too. Won’t you come disappear with me?” 

Ymir smiled stupidly. Run away. Why not. It wasn’t like she needed to pack. “Okay. Just point the way.” 

“The way?” She bit at some hair escaping from her ponytail, teeth moving like a saw. “We can think of it later. We have to go before they finish reinforcing the castle. If we don’t leave before then…” 

“I could turn into a titan and smash one of the windows!”

“Yes!” Historia spun back to the desk, slapping her hands all over the table until she found a penknife. “Here, use this! Do you have—will you have enough room?” 

“It’ll be fine,” she said. “I’ll just have to keep my head down. Once we’re outside we should have…” 

Wait a second. This didn’t seem right. Where, you need to know where you’re going, even if it’s just north or left. They’d get out of the forest and run in circles around the castle until tiny captain sliced her leg off. The fog of Historia’s persuasion wafted up by a few inches. 

Historia folded the penknife in Ymir’s hand. Her fingers lingered on Ymir’s wrist, then slid up, firmly, to the bend of her elbow. “Ymir,” she said. “Show me your true face.” 

The knife was waiting to be used. It’d be so simple and so fast—well, first she’d have to barricade the door to delay captain tightwad. Then she’d have to… Her whole brain had stopped working. What was she doing and why? The answer jumped to mind so fast, it was amazing she had forgotten it in the first place. She’d do it for the hunger in Historia’s eyes. She’d do it for the way it pulled at her, inexorable and merciless. She had known many kinds of terror, but this one frightened her for how pliable it made her. Lose an arm or a leg, she could regrow it by sitting out in the sun until it pushed back out of her, fingers and toes appearing from the sausage-blunt end of the healing limb. For this, she’d submit to Historia willingly, put her head on an executioner’s block and trust she’d be killed slow enough to enjoy it. 

Her lips sealed together, opened, shut again. Historia’s grip grew more uncomfortable. Ymir’s jaw moved this time. It shook, like she was cold, but this time she got the words out. “Kiss,” she said. 

“Huh?” 

“Give me a kiss,” she said. “It’s what you’re supposed to do before a heist.” 

“That’s not funny.” 

“Do you want us to get caught five seconds out of the castle or do you want to make it to the next town?” When Historia frowned, she said, pushy, “You owe me a few for leaving me locked up for so long.”

“Fine!” She held onto the collar of Ymir’s shirt, the flat of her curled fingers a bony pressure against the front of Ymir’s neck. Ymir could scarcely breathe. Historia’s face scrunched in concentration, as though kissing had been one of the things she forgot to bring with her into her new shell. 

“What are you reading over there?” Ymir said when Historia’s heels settled back on the ground. “Anything exciting?” 

“Why won’t you turn into a Titan?” Historia said. “Didn’t you say ‘yes’ just a minute ago?” 

Objection. A minute ago they had been kissing. Not well, but she’d take what she could get. 

“I’ve changed my mind,” Ymir said. “Forget it. Take me back to the cell.”

“But—why?” Historia’s fingers closed on her collar again, fingers now shoved harder against Ymir’s neck like Historia was executing the slowest punch imaginable. “Ymir, you said you’d go, you’d said you’d come with me—” 

Ymir bent her knees, the easier for Historia to manhandle her, but Historia was already letting go, this time to scramble for the penknife in Ymir’s hand. Ymir held her arm high, walking backwards to put more space between them. “That was before I realized your plan was so stupid!” Historia’s open palm smacked straight into Ymir’s armpit midstep. Ymir swore. The penknife dropped from her hand. 

“I see,” Historia said. “You wouldn’t take me anyway.” 

“That’s not fair.” 

“Excuse me! I’m done with her now.” Just before the guard came in, Historia said suddenly, “What did you find over there?” 

She had found… well, she had been a captive over there, too, so there wasn’t much time for exploration. And she had been either running for her life or trying to not die the whole time, so she hadn’t had much time to think, either. And she already knew who she was and what she was made of, something Historia couldn’t claim at all. She bet that was what Historia wanted to hear. _I found myself_ or some other kind of weird mystical mumbo jumbo bullshit. 

She had found that she had a reason to return. Of course she had left knowing this. It was more like—she had found that she was the kind of person who was capable of returning. She could walk away and do more than wonder on slow days what had happened to this person or to that person. She could turn right back around and run into a cage. 

“A lot of skeletons,” she said. 

“That’s not funny,” Historia said, and turned away. 

*** 

She spent another week in there before they packed up the castle again. News had come from a patrol: their location had been discovered. It was time to go. Soldiers swarmed into every room, loaded everything onto carts, and gathered the horses.

Then the enemy fired their guns, blowing the faces off five soldiers of the Survey Corps on the first volley. The horses reared up in fright and scattered. Everyone was shouting. Ymir saw this through the bars of her small window, heard it when she pressed her ear against the heavy door. She could make it out, she guessed, if she turned into a Titan. She couldn’t tell the odds, but she bet the attackers had put snipers deeper in the woods and had broken up into small attacking units to disrupt and hassle instead of launching an outright assault… and the Survey Corps, living up to their high mortality rate, no doubt had thrown themselves into the enemy’s sight with barely a thought. If she turned into a Titan, she could make it out of here and no one would be able to stop her. Might not even know she was gone.

Gunpowder smoke rose up in small tufts against the stark black trees. Soldiers from the castle were working smarter now instead of jumping into the trees and getting shot down. But it was a mess down there, everyone thrown off by the ambush and no one sure of where anyone else was. She tugged at the chain on her cell, ready to stretch and go to sleep, but as her eyes shut she saw Historia against the darkness. Where was she now, what was she doing, what was she thinking?

She snapped her eyes open and jumped up. Historia probably knew what a good time this was, too. 

“Hey!” Ymir said, but her voice was nothing up in this cell. Everyone was focused on the outside, on bullets, on politics, on some member of their trainee division possibly out there, ready to cut them down just for a king. She yanked at the iron chain, then tugged at the manacle around her ankle. Give the Survey Corps points for one thing: they didn’t cheap out on the gear. She lowered her head and hunched her shoulders in. Then she brought her hand up to her mouth and bit down. 

Her head crashed through the ceiling. The manacle around her ankle constricted around her foot, refusing to give. Ymir punched the bars on the window until the whole wall broke and, with a yell, ripped off the foot. She stuck her head through the hole, grabbed onto a handhold, and heaved herself out of the cell. 

Up, to the sun! She yanked herself up all the way to the top of the castle. Historia was there already in uniform, staring at the edge of the roof as though entranced. Her foot moved to the ledge. She smiled bravely at Ymir, then jumped. 

Ymir howled and hurled herself over the edge. But Historia, with the force of a grasshopper’s spring and a hiss of gas, zipped past Ymir’s falling belly and attached herself to a tree. Ymir tried to turn in midair, then tried to stop her descent. She broke her fingers against the castle’s smooth towers, roared in pain, and continued to fall. 

“Change back!” Historia shouted, leaping down from the tree. “Change back, Ymir!” 

God help her. She shut her eyes and did it: launched herself out of her other self, flesh sizzling away into steam, nothing to catch her except the black rocks below. She could hear Historia panting, swearing, the snap and squeal of metal… If she had stayed in her Titan form, she’d walk out of this with broken legs and probably a smashed spine but she’d be able to hobble out sooner or later, but now her only rescue would be a girl whose scores on the 3DMG exam had been bought—by her own hand, at that. 

Historia’s arm grabbed onto the back of her shirt. The metal wires screamed against each other as they shot out, the gas jetted out, and they snapped out of falling and into flight, thrown up by wires to the tree tops. Historia threw Ymir onto the branch then fell next to Ymir and shouted, “I did it!” 

“Congratulations,” Ymir choked out. She opened her eyes, then clung harder to the tree branch. Her right foot was still a stump and her fingers were tender, but she was doing better by the minute. Historia knelt besides her. She traced Ymir’s hairline with her hand, brushing aside her bangs to reveal her forehead. She had no bags, no extra gas. Her jacket had been cleaned recently. The metal on her collar gleamed like a clever eye. 

“We’ll have to go deeper into the forest,” Historia said. “They’ll be looking for us soon. You’re so heavy. You didn’t bring your own 3DMG? Or shoes?” 

“I didn’t have enough time to get any of that stuff!” She leaned on Historia, hopping on her one foot as Historia searched for their next hiding spot. “Where were you planning on going, anyway?” 

Historia held firm onto Ymir’s waist and sent them to another tree, then another, until they found a spot away from the castle and with large enough branches so Ymir could recline against the trunk and have her legs out in front of her. Historia held onto a branch above them, rising up on her toes to reach. 

“Eren told me about some books Armin has,” Historia said. “That talk about what things are outside the wall. Did you see the ocean while you were gone?” 

“The what? You mean that great slop of water? You want to get wet?” 

“If there’s an ocean, there might be another country. Another country with no Titans, with no kings, with no war… even if there was no one living there, even if it was infested with the worst bugs, we could go there and leave everyone else!” She shook the branch and pine needles fell around them. She put her forehead against the back of her wrist and closed her eyes. 

It was a grim spectacle. Ymir watched Historia’s heaving breaths, then said, “No one talked about that.” Because swimming was an unseemly activity! No, she wouldn’t mind seeing Historia by the waters in a swimming suit, or even just soaked in her fatigues. 

Historia sat at Ymir’s feet. She put a hand, delicate as a spider, on Ymir’s knee. “What did you talk about?” 

“Food. Chipmunk burrows.” Whether or not to kill each other, she didn’t say. There had also been arguments about tea: whether to boil the water all the way and then let it cool for a few minutes before pouring it over the leaves, or to never let the water boil because the water would lose its energy or something. If traveling alone had been lonely, at least she didn’t have to make an honorable attempt to kill someone over whether to use ceramic or metal cups for the group brew. 

The sounds of the battle by the castle were fading. Smoke from the gunpowder no longer showed over the tops of the trees. People were gathering back to the castle. Historia took notice, her head swiveling and eyes narrowing at the horizon. 

“Who do you think won?” Ymir said. 

“I don’t know.” Historia rose to her feet and said, “I could leave you here.” 

It was true. Historia could throw herself a good long way from here. Ymir, with her cut-off foot and injured fingers and too-recent transformation, would be huffing and puffing after her. And even after Historia ran out of gas, she could probably grab onto one of those escaping horses and ride it out. Who knew: she might even find a burlap sack and have the sense to cover her shining hair. 

Historia’s hand settled on her harness, her little finger resting against the gas canister. The tree branches formed a black net behind and around her. Ymir at first wanted to say, No you won’t! Actually, she might have, if Ymir had said that. She’d run if she thought she was being cornered, she’d run even if she didn’t think there would be a way out. She would run for her life straight into a frozen land. 

“Come here,” she said, holding up her fingers. “My hand hurts. Kiss it better.” 

“I’m not falling for your distractions again.”

“I’m serious! I broke my whole hand. And you didn’t kiss me enough last time. I’m hurt.” 

She sighed, but worked her way over. She took Ymir’s hand in hers, turning it over and squeezing her palm with a farmer’s firmness. 

“Ow! Ow, ow, ow!” 

“It’ll heal by itself,” Historia said, her voice low. Christa would have ripped apart her shirt. She moved farther back to examine Ymir’s stump. Ymir had to fight to not kick out and knock them both over. She massaged Ymir’s calf half-heartedly, then stopped. She stared at the ground, seeking the base black dirt through the weaving branches. 

Ymir leaned over, readjusting her position so her mouth was by Historia’s ear. “Why didn’t you run before I got here?” Historia said nothing. She didn’t move her eyes. She didn’t even seem to be breathing. “I bet you’ve had plenty of chances to get away. You were just too scared to take them.” 

“What do you want, Ymir?” Historia said. 

“I’unno.” She put a hand on Historia’s shoulder, rubbed it clumsily, then stuck it into her pocket. “Guess I wanted you to take me with you.” 

“I would have,” Historia said, looking up from the forest floor. “I was going to check every window until I found you.”

“How were you planning on getting me out, then?” Ymir demanded. “Are you hiding a saw in your pocket?” 

“I don’t know! I wasn’t thinking! I thought there would be a door!” 

“Only on the inside!” 

“I thought you would have made a door by then! That’s your great skill, isn’t it? Always being able to leave.”

“I wouldn’t have left you.” When Historia looked over to the castle, Ymir said, “I came back for you, didn’t I? And I’ve stayed for you. Look at me—I’ve been locked up all this time just to be with you. I stayed. How much more do you need?” She had both of her hands on Historia’s shoulders, clutching with a desperation she didn’t know she could express. All the indignities of her imprisonment and captivity came rushing back to her: the long hours alone in that cell, the shitty food, the way Historia had, out of injury or anger, refused to see her for so long. Never mind the outrageous affront to her world view and everything she valued. She had endured it only for the promise that, at the end, she would be forgiven. She had left—but she had left to give Historia a future. She left but she came back. She came back and here she was with nothing but her bare heart, ready to give up everything. 

Historia’s hand wrapped around Ymir’s bicep. Then she took Ymir’s face in her hands and brought it down to kiss her forehead. “I know,” she said. “I know. I’m sorry. Stay with me. I’m sorry.” 

Ymir brought her head down to Historia’s shoulder. She stayed cradled there in Historia’s arms until the soldiers found them and returned them to the castle.


End file.
